In the twinkling of an eye …

 

 

… your baby turns 40!

   Every mother wants to have at least one picture of their daughter with a sumo wrestler, no?

(Readers. is it just me or does 40 look alot younger than it used to?  I know it’s hard to judge, isn’t it, because your eye just keeps being drawn back to that verry interesting guy beside her!  I’m pretty sure this was taken at the conference she recently attended in San Francisco.)

It has always been fun and interesting being your mother, daughter of mine.  Thank you for adding to my life immeasurably.

Happy Birthday, Babe. 

Love, Mom and Dad

Readers, we are going to Chicago for the weekend to help DD celebrate her birthday.  So, no posts for the next two days.  But on Monday I’ll be posting about an interesting event I attended yesterday and it will include a prize you can win.  See you then!

Photography with an old friend!

 

Remember when I dropped my Panasonic Lumix camera in August?  Well, it has finally been repaired and returned from the factory good as new.  I’m thrilled.  My Kodak Easy Share did its best to fill in, but it just wasn’t the same.

The main reason I missed my Lumix is that it fits in my purse so that I can take it with me whereever I go.  But, I also like its editing software better.

So, here are some pictures that I took with my prodigal camera and then enjoyed editing:

 

   I can’t tell you how many times I have admired the view across the lake through early morning fog, but I’ve really had trouble capturing the “feel” of it with the camera.  This is the best one I’ve gotten so far.  I think that’s because I finally figured out to do it in gray tones.

 

   I like this berry picture …

   … but I love these variations.

 

     A nearby street light in early morning fog.      A closer look.

 

    Kind of an Asian feel?

 

    I took this out the car window on the way to church around 8 o’clock in the morning.  I almost deleted it, before it occurred to me that if I would crop it to just that little corner of filtered sunlight and fields, I might have something …

   … and I really liked the result.

 

Welcome back, old friend.  I’ve missed you.

Mama Remembered: Ringside Seats!

 

 

 An excerpt from Mama’s book I Remember:

When we lived in Springfield, every year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving there was a Christmas parade.  We lived just a block from the street it always went down, and Sandy always looked forward to it.  The last couple of years we lived in Springfield, she and her friend Phoebe Ann carried step ladders (Sandra’s note: really our dads carried them) over to the parade route and sat up on them so they could watch the parade over people’s heads.  It was always a great parade.

This picture brings several thoughts to mind. 

~ I wonder if our ladders were annoying to other parade watchers.  From the looks of the picture, either we got there really early, or most of the watchers were standing on the other side of the cars, in the street.  I think I remember that that was typical.  That was probably a sign of how much smaller parades were then.  People could stand in the street, along both sides, and the parade could still get through.  (I also remember that the street the parade was on was a main street and wider than most.)  Anyway, I don’t have any memories of people being clustered around the bottom of the ladders. 

~You’ll notice Mama was there to take a picture so I’m guessing when she wasn’t standing back to take a picture, she was standing right there between our ladders “in case we fell”.  Like little her was going to catch us! 

~I wonder if it bugged Phoebe Ann that my ladder was taller than hers.  I think it would have probably bugged me, if  the situation was reversed. 

~We seldom wore pants.  I can see my bare leg, so I’m sure we had dresses on under our coats.  But it looks like I have my hands in my pockets so it must have been cold.

~And, finally, I wonder if the true reason we moved to Indiana was because Daddy was offered a new job or if he was really just looking for a way to “get out ‘a Dodge” because he was tired of “helping” me haul that ol’ step ladder over to the parade route!

I do remember looking forward to those long-ago parades, even before we started having “ringside seats”.  

Another fond memory Mama’s book recalled for me.

Rainy Day Ham and Bean Soup

 

A couple days ago we were having absolutely beautiful, warm weather, but yesterday it was chilly and rainy, reminding us that after all it is mid-November and we shouldn’t expect too much of that.   

And in my mind, a rainy November day calls for comfort food.  So, I got out the jar of great northern beans I always keep in the cupboard and a package of diced ham I always keep in the freezer, and made our favorite ham and bean soup.  And, as we were eating it, I decided you might like it too.  So, here’s the recipe:

Easy Ham and Bean Soup

  You’ll notice the jar of beans and the package of ham are empty.  In a perfect world I would have thought about sharing this recipe before I had actually made the soup!  (I had to get the ham wrapper out of the trash and the bean jar isn’t actually empty because it already has the leftover soup in it, ready to go in the fridge.)

Combine in a large stove top pan (you know, larger than a sauce pan, smaller than a dutch oven):

48 oz. jar of great northern beans

8 oz. package of diced ham  (it’s 96% fat free – how the heck do they do that, use skinny pigs?)

can of 96% fat free chicken broth (skinny chickens?)

a half cup of diced onion

a couple glubs of olive oil

hot sauce to taste

Bring to a boil and then lower heat to medium or medium low and cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Use a potato masher to mash up some of the beans to make the soup thicker.

 At the table we add salt, pepper and vinegar (from the same cruet Mama used for the vinegar when she served bean soup).

Easy and soooo good.  Perfect.

p.s.  If bean soup gives you “gastronomic distress”, there’s a fix for that.

 

Call me Nana

 

When I was a little girl almost every grandmother I knew was called “Grandma something“.  I say almost because Mama’s mother chose to be called Mom Browning by everyone, including her grandchildren.  I remember asking why that was the case and being told that she didn’t want to be called “Grandma” because it made her feel old.  I don’t know if that was really her reason, but I do know that it was considered unusual to not call her “Grandma”, at least in our family.

But then I met someone who widened my view of the world by letting me see a totally different way of life than my own Midwestern one, giving me many new experiences that I would remember for the rest of my life, and changing many of my notions along the way about “how things are done” … including what grandmas are called.

 I was 7 or 8 years old when I met the fascinating Page who was marrying my brother.  She dazzled this little Midwestern girl in many ways, not the least of which was that she was pretty … slim and tan with dark hair and eyes and a soft, husky voice that always sounded like she was smiling.   (Can you hear a smile?  I thought I could.)  She was 19 or 20 years old when I met her and she lived with her family in a big house in California, with a swimming pool in the back yard!  I had never known anyone with their own swimming pool.  And I even got to swim in it! 

And she took me for my first ride in a convertible on a California freeway.  The combination of riding in a convertible for the first time and on a multiple lane highway with lots of cars whizzing by, all done with the (in my eyes) glamorous Page doing the driving in a very chic big straw hat with a scarf-like attachment to tie under the chin and big sunglasses (very 50’s chic, ala Audrey Hepburn), is all indelibly etched into my memory. 

Even her name charmed me.  To me, Page just sounded so sophisticated and so different than all the Peggy’s and Barbara’s and Susie’s I knew!

The other thing I loved about Page was that she talked to me.  Remember when you were a little kid?  Aren’t the people you remember the best the ones who looked you in the eye and actually talked to you, rather than at you?  I remember Page was one of the people who did that with me.  And in one of our conversations, she told me about her beloved “Nana”, her grandmother who had died a few years earlier.  I decided right then and there that when I was a grandmother, I was going to tell my grandchildren to call me “Nana”.

Years later after Page and my brother divorced, she continued to deal with circumstances in her own unique way.  She and her three girls and her new husband lived in California and my parents lived here in Indiana.  After the divorce, that would have been a great excuse for Page to lessen contact with my parents, but she didn’t.  She kept in contact with them herself and made sure that her girls did too.  And, when she and her new husband and the girls would travel in their motor home around the country, they would always come by to see my parents.  Many, many times Mama said how much she appreciated that Page made sure, even with the distance and the divorce, that her girls had as close a relationship as possible with their Indiana Grandma and Grandpa.

When Page’s daughters started having their own families, it didn’t surprise me at all that she came up with a very unique name for her grandchildren to call her, Star.  I don’t remember exactly what the story was about why she picked that name, but it was certainly an original and I’m sure she never had to worry about identifying which “Star” she was, as some grandmothers have to do, ala Grandma Smith as opposed to Grandma Jones.

Since then, I have heard many names that grandmother’s have their grandchildren call them other than Grandma, like Mimi, Memaa and Mame.  And DD’s Italian mother-in-law used the traditional Italian name, Noni.  But there was never any question that when I had grandchildren, I wanted to be called “Nana”.

I was inspired to write this post about names for grandmothers because last Friday, Page’s oldest daughter became a grandmother for the first time, and I was wondering what she would have her new grandson call her. 

But, in the end, it really doesn’t make any difference what we are called.  Grandma, ”Mom”, Nana, Star, Mimi, Memaa, Mame, Noni and all the other names … are all just identifiers for women in a very special “club” who have the honor of being someone special in their grandchildren’s lives.

A Story to Ponder: Red Marbles

 

I have received a story in a forwarded e-mail that touched my heart so, of course, I wanted to share it here.  May it bless your Sunday.

RED MARBLES
 
I was at the corner grocery store buying some early potatoes. I noticed a small boy, delicate of bone and feature, ragged but clean, eyeing a basket of freshly picked green peas.
 
I paid for my potatoes but was also drawn to the display of fresh green peas. I am a pushover for creamed peas and new potatoes.  Pondering the peas, I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation between Mr. Miller (the store owner) and the ragged boy next to me.
 
“Hello Joe, how are you today?”
 
“Hi, Mr. Miller. Fine, thank you. Just admirin’ those peas. They sure look good.  My mom loves fresh peas.”
 
“They are good, Joe.  How is your mom?”
 
“Fine.  Gettin’ stronger all time.”
 
“Good.  Anything I can help you with?”
 
“No, Sir. Just admirin’ those peas.”
 
“Would you like to take some home?” asked Mr. Miller
  
“No, Sir.  Got nothin’ to pay for them with.”
 
“Well, what do you have to trade me for some of those peas?”
 
“All I have is my prize marble here.”
 
“Is that right? Let me see it” said Miller.
 
“Here it is.  She’s a dandy.”
 
“I can see that. Hmmmmm.  Only thing is this one is blue and I sort of go for red.  Do you have a red one like this at home?” the store owner asked.
 
“Not exactly, but almost.”
 
“Tell you what. Take this sack of peas home with you and next trip this way let me look at that red marble.” Mr. Miller told the boy.
 
“Great!  I’ll do that. Thanks, Mr. Miller.”
 
Mrs. Miller, who had been standing nearby, came over to help me. With a smile she said, “’There are two other boys like him in our community.  All three are in very poor circumstances.  Jim just loves to bargain with them for peas, apples, tomatoes or whatever.  When they come back with their red marbles, and they always do, he decides he doesn’t like red after all and he sends them home with a bag of produce for a green marble or an orange one, when they come on their next trip to the store.”
 
I left the store smiling to myself, impressed with that man. 

A short time later I moved from my hometown in Idaho to Colorado, but I never forgot the story of Mr. Miller, the boys, and their bartering for marbles.
 
A number of years later I had occasion to visit some old friends back home and while I was there learned that Mr. Miller had died.
 
They were having his visitation that evening and my friends wanted to go, so I accompanied them.  Upon arrival at the mortuary, we fell into line to meet the relatives of the deceased and to offer whatever words of comfort we could.
 
Ahead of us in line were three young men. One was in an army uniform and the other two wore nice haircuts, dark suits and white shirts … all very professional looking. They approached Mrs. Miller, standing composed and smiling by her husband’s casket.  Each of the young men hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, spoke briefly with her and moved on to the casket.
 
Her misty light blue eyes followed them as one by one each young man stopped briefly and placed his own warm hand over the cold pale hand in the casket.  Each left the mortuary awkwardly wiping his eyes.
 
Our turn came to meet Mrs. Miller.  I told her who I was and reminded her of the story from those many years ago and what she had told me about her husband’s bartering for marbles.  With her eyes glistening, she took my hand and led me to the casket.
 
“Those three young men who just left were the boys I told you about. They just told me how much they appreciated the things Jim ‘traded’ them.  And now, at last, when Jim can’t change his mind about color or size, they came to pay their debt.”
 
“We’ve never had a great deal of the wealth of this world,” she confided, “but right now, Jim would consider himself the richest man in Idaho.”
 
With loving gentleness she lifted the lifeless fingers of her deceased husband.  Resting underneath were three exquisitely shined red marbles.
 
It’s not what you gather, but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you have lived.

 

If you really want to punish the Fort Hood murderer

 

. . . maybe he shouldn’t be given the death penalty.

I remember seeing a poster years ago that just had a picture of a teenage boy in a wheelchair.  The caption read, “Sometimes suicide doesn’t work.”

I thought that was such a compelling effort to deter teenagers from thoughts of suicide.  While they might be thinking death would be easier to face that whatever “insurmountable” (in their young minds) problems they were facing, the thought of having to live their lives with those problems plus being disabled might be a compelling deterent.

A man who belonged to the church I attended in my growing-up years, had a bullet lodged in his brain from a failed teenage suicide attempt.  He was a brilliant engineer, so obviously, the attempt didn’t hinder his thought processes, but he always had fragile health with many health problems related to the lodged bullet.

I now hear that the Fort Hood coward is paralyzed from the waist down.  And that makes me wonder if him having to live as a paraplegic (in prison without possibility of parole, of course) who also would have to suffer the disdain of everyone who dealt with him and knew what he had done, wouldn’t be a more appropriate punishment than the death penalty.

A Looooong, Lonely Walk

 

About 10 years ago Bob, a co-worker of mine at the truck manufacturing company, told me about a surprise he had when on a business trip to one of our company’s suppliers in another country.

The office area of the company was just one very large room full of workers at desks.  No partitions or individual offices.  Everybody could see and hear everything everyone else said and did.  All there was other than that was a small reception area with a few chairs and a receptionist at the end of the room where you entered.  And a meeting room and restroom at the other end of the room. 

Bob said the first thing that struck him was the lack of privacy … no one, no matter how high an officer in the company, could make a call or say a word to a co-worker without everyone around them hearing. 

And it soon became apparent that there was another activity that everyone knew alot about too, because there was no toilet paper in the restroom. 

Everyone, including visitors like Bob who were in a meeting in the conference room, if you thought you were going to need it, had to walk allll the way to the other end of the room to get the roll of toilet paper from the receptionist, and then walk allll the way back through the room carrying it with you to the restroom.  And, of course, when you were done with it you had to make the trip again to return it.  (Hmmm. I wonder what happened if you used up the roll?  Do you suppose you had to take the empty tube back to the receptionist?  Or, at least had to go back to explain why you weren’t returning the roll?!) 

I think several things probably made this especially awkward for Bob.  He is very tall and the people in the country he was visiting tend to be short, so any time he walked through the room, he really stood out.  And also, he was in his sixties when this happened, so he is from a generation that is not used to having their “business” known by everyone.  So, I’m sure this was a verrrrry long walk for him to make.  Although, he does have a great sense of humor, so he enjoyed telling the story when he returned home.

Moral of this story:  Be thankful for the little things …  like toilet paper in restrooms.

  

Another post on the subject of restrooms that you might enjoy is It’s Not Always Easy Being Grandpa about grandpas and the dilemma of taking granddaughters to the rest room in public places.

Wasted Creativity

 

I was fascinated by the 80’s TV show, MacGyver.  It was always interesting to see MacGyver use just his creativity and whatever seemingly unimportant items were at hand,  like a scrap of string and a broken chair leg, to do spectacular things, like disarm a bomb or build a bicycle to get away from the bad guys!  The writer’s were definitely using their own creativity to come up with such clever plots week after week, and I’m sure were making a very good living doing it.

That’s a example of people who have used their God-given creativity in a positive way.  But, not everyone uses their creativity to make their lives better!

When I worked at the jail, I was struck by the creativity of some of the inmates, who obviously hadn’t used their talent to help themselves to a better life.  Many times I saw art on envelopes that inmates were mailing that was absolutely beautiful!  Especially considering the only thing they had to draw with was a very short, very flexible ballpoint pen.  And sometimes the art on the envelopes would be in color!  They would achieve that by soaking the M&M’s we sold them, in water to make water colors — how clever.  With artistic talent like that, I would think that if they were so inclined they could have had careers that used their talent — like graphic arts or advertising or teaching art.

One time an inmate almost broke out of the jail while I worked there by using a variety of items he managed to lay his hands on (two of the items I remember he used were the baby oil we sold them for dry skin and a small brass plate that he pried off the wall) to heat the brass plate so that he could use the edge of it to work on cutting through the plexiglass “security shield” on the window in his cell.  By the time he was discovered, he had managed to weaken the window (which looked out on the roof of another section of the jail, so must have looked like an easy escape route) enough that it was obvious he had then been using his heel to repeatedly kick at the weakened spot.  Luckily, before he could get it done, a guard discovered what he was doing.  The reason he wasn’t discovered sooner is that until he started the final step — kicking the weakened part of the glass out – the little lines he was making in the window that was back in the corner of his cell, furthest from the door, weren’t noticable. 

When I heard about this near-escape (and I did go up to the cellblock and actually saw his handi-work too after he and his cellmate had been moved), all I could think of was what creativity that inmate had used to try to break out of jail, and what a successful life he could have had if he would have used his creativity for something productive, like being an engineer or a scientist!  What a waste.

Something happened this week to spark this train of thought.  At our WW meeting on Tuesday the discussion was about ways to keep Thanksgiving from derailing the healthy lifestyle we are all working to achieve. 

We first discussed ways to “lighten” the meal, and the strategy of sending left-overs home with family members, so that the fattening meal didn’t end up being extended over more than one day as leftovers.

But then the discussion turned to ways to increase the level of calorie-burning activity on that day.  It was pointed out that the hostess probably works off alot of her calories with all the preparation, serving and clean-up.  And several members volunteered ideas about ways their families get active on that day that work off some of the calories.  One told that her family traditionally takes a group walk after the meal, and others told about games they play to get active.

Then one woman said, woefully, that that’s all well and good if your family members really want to get some exercise, but, she pointed out, there are always ways to get around getting exercise if you are creative enough.

And then she gave us an example of her non-exercising family’s creativity.  One time when a badminton court had been set up in the back yard, some of her family members sat in lawn chairs while they played!  And do you know what they called it?  sittin’-minton!! 

I would say sittin’-minton was the biggest laugh of the meeting.  But, on the serious side, imagine what healthy lives those relatives could have if they used their cleverness and creativity to find ways to exercise.

Like browsing in a candy store . . .

 

. . . just as much of a treat, but without the potential calories … that’s browsing in the blogging world!

Because my lovely friend, Hilary, at The Smitten Image, made my story about A Hardworking Grandma one of her Posts of the Week, I received some comments from people I’ve never “met” before.

And one comment was especially interesting.  A comment by gaelikaa caught my interest when she said that she, like Hubby’s mother, lives in the same house with her in-laws, plus her brother-in-law and his wife!  But she went on to say that that isn’t at all unusual where they live … in India.

Who could resist following that intriguing thread?  So, I went to her blog, gaelikaa – Out of Ireland. into India, and it is fascinating reading.  I think if you visit there, you will agree. 

She is Irish but her husband is Indian and she has lived in India for the last 15 years with him and their four children. 

One of her commenters said that reading one of her posts is like reading a mini-novel, and I agree.  An excellent writer, writing about a culture very different from my own.

This just reminds me, once again, isn’t the blogging world wonderful?  There are so many interesting people and stories out there to “meet” and read about at our leisure.

And, of course, the biggest blessing of my blog world, is those of you I have come to know and call friend, both bloggers and commenters.  Thank you for becoming a wonderful part of my world, friends.

Now I recommend you go read about gaelikaa dealing with daily life in a very different culture than what most of us have experienced.  A worthwhile read.